Ben Paddon

Category: Writing

  • Ben’s Boomer’s Day Off FAQ

    I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about Boomer’s Day Off lately. Has there been a resurgance in its popularity? I’ve no idea. Anyway, I tend to get asked the same questions over and over, and I’m going to go ahead and answer them here as best I can before I climb into bed.

    Will there be any more episodes?

    Honestly, I don’t know. Michelle seems to want to do another one, and I’d love to do one if we can come up with an idea that actually furthers the story of these characters. There’s a lot standing in the way of us doing another episode, though – it all depends on whether the cast want to do it. It’s a huge ordeal getting everybody together, getting the make-up ready and so forth.

    What would the fifth episode be about?

    We have’t yet hammered out a concrete idea. Michelle had some rough ideas. She reads the comments on YouTube and the feedback we get through Steam, and where possible she tries to give little nods to stuff the fans want. One of the things people really wanted to see was Frank the Tank, and she spent some time last month looking into how we could do that. I’m perhaps a little bit more skeptical as to whether or not we could pull off a Tank on our limited budget, but anything is possible.

    Can you give me Tim’s/Michelle’s/Ben Dunn’s contact details? He/she is so awesome.

    No. Sorry. Michelle and I made our Steam handles available on the videos, and our email addresses are both publicly available, but that’s about it. I’m not going to give you Ben Dunn’s address or Tim’s phone number. (Yes, people have asked. Creepy, creepy people.)

    Are you going to boycott Left 4 Dead 2?

    No bloody way. You know how utterly ridiculous the entire boycott is? People are complaining about how the game hasn’t had any serious content added to it, but you know what? We got an entirely new gameplay mode and a map to play it on. For free. We’ve had hundreds of hours of entertainment from a game that cost us $50. Compare that to some games, which offer only six or seven hours of gameplay for $40-60. Some people claim that the development of a sequel shows that Valve had no faith in the original, but they started development of L4D2 almost immediately after they finished development of L4D. You don’t jump straight into developing the sequel if you think the game isn’t going to sell in the first place.

    Left 4 Dead continues to be an utterly fantastic experience and in all honesty I don’t expect the sequel to be any less.

    Are Tim and Michelle a couple?

    Nope!

    Are you and Michelle a couple?

    Nope!

    Are you and Tim a couple?

    Nope! I just let him jump on me sometimes.

    What else are you working on?

    Kill9 have a few projects in store for later in the year, and I’m not going to be involved in writing any of those. Kill9 will be doing a musical, and I’m considering auditioning for that, but I’m not sure my voice is quite up to par. We’ll see.

    As for me, I continue to roll on with Jump Leads (we’ll be at Comic-Con this year, more details to come shortly) and But, Sir…, and today I launched a new podcast called Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse wherein I interview people I want to talk to just for the Hell of it. PodWarp 1999 is more or less done but we may be doing a reunion special in the near future. And I’ve started drawing again, so there’s a chance I may launch a second webcomic – one I’ll be drawing myself.

    I think that pretty much covers every question I’ve been asked so far. I’ll update this list as time goes by, assuming anyone asks me anything that isn’t “wen r u doin part 5????”

  • Disk Editing For Fun And Profit

    Amiga Power is the magazine that made me want to write about videogames for a living. I’ve since changed my tune, but it’s hard not to read stuff like this and not think to myself, “Man, that sure sounds like fun.”

    Disk Editing For Fun And Profit

    Easily the most harrowing aspect of AMIGA POWER, the universally hated though vitally important task of organising games (as opposed to physically compiling the disks) fell to anyone who wasn’t icy enough not to care.

    Ten rubberingly-stretched days of crushing desperation would then happen to the hapless individual, on top of their usual duties of writing the mag, or subbing it, or being the Editor, with no safety net of a humorous feature to put in instead and everyone else treading round them carefully as you’d do with someone due to be executed on Thursday, at the end of which a set of games would appear as if wrought from the air by sheer mental effort.

    These would then be sent off to Kenny The Disk Compiler and by noon he’d have called back to report four of the games had custom loaders that would need two days to crack, three were A1200-only, one of the others needed 6mb of memory and anyway there was only room for that PD version of Pacman, provided we didn’t mind it split across both disks.

    Shouting would occur while everyone else ran away, and four days later the finalised disks would arrive with the duplicators, who would then lose the labels or spontaneously forget how to work their machines. Eventually, samples would be returned to the office, where they’d fail to work on at least the two most popular of the 790 models of Amiga currently on sale, and weeping would result, and kicking in of photocopiers.

    Finally, the okay would be given to copy thousands of disks, and with only a few days’ delay while the duplicators neglected to examine the fax or spontaneously forgot how to read, the issue and its shiny game-packed coverdisks would appear on the shelves.

    The pallid wretch who had pulled this off would then swear on the eyes of the orphan children of the world never to do it again until it was his turn.

    And why did we go through this stomach-clutching terror month after month? Because we cared. Do you see? Do you get it yet? We cared. Because we cared. That was the point. Because we cared. Do you understand? Is it clear? Because we cared. It was because we cared that we did it. Have you grasped that thought and do you hold it in your head, that we cared?

    Gagh. (Dies.)

  • The Written Word, Written Down

    I don’t write about my personal life much anymore.

    I have an anonymous blog. It’s elsewhere on the Internet, far from any servers or accounts with my name or email address attached to it. But I haven’t posted there in some time. I keep getting the urge, but it feels so… weightless. So inconsequential. It’s the same reason I don’t buy books for the Amazon Kindle – I don’t feel like I really have anything. I like the way books feel in my hands, the way the paper feels as I turn from one page to the next.

    With that in mind, I’ve decided that as soon as I’m able to do so I shall be popping out and getting a nice leatherbound Journal in which to write things down. Something swanky, like my own Journal of Impossible Things. I like the idea of being able to pick up these weighty books at some point in my future and reading through my exploits. What did 23 year-old Ben do in his spare time? What did he really think about that girl he met on the set of “Greek” all those years ago? Where did he go to eat, besides Jack in the Box?

    It’s a romantic thought. It’s probably also very, very silly, especially when you consider that my handwriting is so absolutely terrible that there are chickens out there who get all offended and uppity whenever anyone compares it to their scratchings. But it’s something I want to do. Something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. Considering I’ve already scratched off two of my lifelong ambitions in the past month, I figure it doesn’t hurt to go for a third, relatively minor ambition.

  • The Beatles: Bigger Than Chuck Norris

    Tonight has been spent alternating between early planning for an animation pitch (one that has me very excited and more energized than anything else I’ve worked on over the past two years) and jumping onto Twitter to join Peter Serafinowicz and Graham Lineham in their #beatlesfacts meme. I actually have no idea if they started it, but the certainly brought it to my attention and I’ve enjoyed participating. Here’s a few I posted…

    • Ironically, John Lennon was born without an imagination. 
    • Ringo Starr was struck by lightning during the Beatles’ first tour of the US, temporarily leaving him able to play the drums. 
    • Neither John Lennon nor George Harrison are actually dead. Paul, however, is. 
    • Liverpool didn’t exist until 1942. McCartney was born in a meadow, and the city erupted out of the ground around him.
    • All four of the Beatles were allergic to Arsenic, and would refuse to eat any meal that included it as an ingredient. 
    • Yoko Ono is actually Bono in a wig. 
    • The Beatles were fully trained hyponotists, often hypnotizing whole stadiums at the start of a show then napping for 2 hours. 

    And here’s some of my favourites from others:

    • President Obama owns the only egg ever to be laid by a Beatle (Ringo). – Serafinowicz
    • Of all their many lineups, most agree the definitive one was John, Paul, Vince, Salbatoré and Prototype-Ringo. – Serafinowicz
    • Paul had a malformed Siamese twin growing out of his chest who occasionally displayed telepathic powers. – pamberjack
    • None of the Beatles was actually ever a Sargeant. – johnrshanley
    • The Beatles originally wanted to call themselves The Coleopteras, but couldn’t figure out how to misspell it. – loki5
    • The character of Mean Mr. Mustard later pursued a successful military career, albeit one blighted by accusations of murder. – stephen_normal
    • When startled, Ringo Starr can inflate to over 6 times his normal size to deter predators. The dark glasses are precautionary. – bookemdanno
    • Ringo stands to collect a huge payout from Corals if he can just get Paul to eat meat. – jonrshanley
    •  In a mathematical anomaly which has baffled academics for years, the square root of Beatles = Beatles. – stephen_normal
    • “The Beatles Kama Sutra” was withdrawn from bookshops after a woman was killed during a Reverse Flying Ringo. – blearyboy

    This is far too much fun. The best ones need to be collected on a Chuck Norris Facts style website. Brilliant.

  • An open letter to Film Critics

    Dear Film Critics,

    I’m not going to lie, I’m slightly envious of your position. You have somehow managed to reach a point where you are basically paid to tell people what you think of this film, or that film. Bloggers like myself are doing that for nothing, which either means we’re remarkably stupid or you’re remarkably clever. The idea that someone can find a career as an Opinion Merchant is one that appeals to me greatly, and I hope some day to be able to count myself amongst your numbers.

    I do take exception, however, to just how incredibly lazy some of you are.

    Firstly, I think it goes without saying that “If you liked x, you’ll love y” is not a review. It barely qualifies as a comparison. Telling me that I’ll love Watchmen because I think The Dark Knight is brilliant? That’s rubbish, and it’s easy-to-write rubbish because they happen to fall into the same genre. I know people who love Notting Hill but absolutely detest Love Actually. There are more than plenty of people out there who adore Lord of the Rings but cannot stand Harry Potter (and no, I don’t care what you say – they are the same genre). If I were your Editor-in-Chief, I would dock your wages for telling me that y is good because it happens to share some familiar elements with x.

    This goes double for “it’s x meets y“. That’s not a review. That’s a pitch. You don’t have to pitch the film to me, you just have to tell me what you thought of it. If your thought was “it’s x meets y” then your opinion is, I think, far too limited to deserve being paid for.

    Finally, and this is perhaps the most important point, there is no such thing as a “popcorn movie”. It doesn’t exist. Nobody, and I mean nobody goes to the theatre to sit there and just eat the popcorn. Describing any film (a recent example being X-Men Origins: Wolverine) as a “popcorn movie” is non-committal, time-wasting bollocks. The film is either worth seeing or it isn’t, and if the best you can muster in the review is thoughts on the concessions then the film probably isn’t worth seeing. I can stay at home and eat much nicer popcorn for far less the expense.

    Please think about this the next time you get to see a movie for free so you can write about it.

    Kind regards,
    Ben Paddon

  • Beaten To The Finish Line

    Because Science Fiction is, as Kris Straub describes it in the foreword to Jump Leads Volume 1, a “thousand-limbed, vein-husked blood sac, its million hearts pumping away,” it’s all too easy to come up with an idea that someone else has already thought of. There is simply far too much scifi out there for one man to reasonably sit down and process all by himself and no matter how hard you try to avoid it you will invariably wind up doing something that’s already been done before.

    Interestingly enough, however, I’ve experienced this in the reverse. There have so far been two occasions where I’ve come up with an idea for Jump Leads that has later been developed somewhere else – Doctor Who, one of the shows that inspired Jump Leads’ creation in the first place…

    The original draft of Issue #2, “It Came From Space!“, was originally a lot more… well, boring. The Flurry arrives on a dilapidated space station. The power is failing, the hull is buckling, and to make matters worse the entire station is beginning a slow descent into a sun. The episode revolved entirely around Meaney deciding he’s capable of saving the station, coordinating with the crew (Anderson, Lloyd and Tudyk) to try and save it. They fail, and the station plummets into the sun only to discover that it’s not a sun at all – it’s a wormhole.

    I didn’t enjoy writing this version of the story, to be honest. The threat didn’t seem tangible enough to work and the ending was lazy and uninteresting. So, at the end of 2006, I scrapped this version (originally called “Pressure Cooker”, and later “Here Comes The Sun”) and began working on what would become the story as you’ve (hopefully) read it. Six months later, the BBC airs an episode of Doctor Who called “42“, in which the TARDIS arrives on a spaceship which is making a slow descent into a sun. Also of interest is the film “Sunshine“, which came out the same year.

    There was another Jump Leads story which I started writing in 2007 but later abandoned (although I like the idea, so I may come back to it). Meaney and Llewellyn arrive at the Library, a Lead facility containing books from every corner of the Multiverse. If a book existed somewhere in the infinite span of reality, it could be found there (rather like the Discworld’s L-Space, only much more physical). Strangely, despite the gargantuan size of the Library, it’s suspiciously empty. The facility has been long-abandoned, and is now home to a race of jaguar/gorilla hybrid creatures who prey upon whatever they can find there.

    It was an interesting idea but I felt that I’d already done the “running away from a monster” idea in ICFS!, and what’s more I’d done it better than I planned to here. Just as well really, because the idea of a ruddy great big library infested with strange, carnivorous creatures would pop up in the brilliant Doctor Who series four two-parter, “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead“. It was much better-executed, too. Gotta love Steven Moffat.

    This sort of thing happens in scifi all the time. Any number of scifi serials have done the “mysterious clone of principle character” storyline, for instance, with recent webcomic examples being Starslip and Good Ship Chronicles. It just goes to show you that no matter how great you think your idea is, someone has likely already beaten you to it.

  • Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

    This is just a small excerpt from a huge piece I just spent half an hour writing. It’s rough and it’s unfinished and it’s going to get a lot bigger.

    It was Philip K. Dick who, in 1968, posed the question of whether or not androids dream of electric sheep.

    The answer, of course, is “No.”

    This is not because androids are incapable of dreaming – far from it – but rather because most androids other than the seldom-seen Hyperpedia Deluxe XLi, a model of super-intelligent robot owned only by the seven richest men in the solar system, have no idea what a sheep is, or what its electrical counterpart would look like.

    To say that androids, robots and other forms of artificial intelligence are bound only by their programming is, again, a rather narrow-minded view of just how robotics actually works, because behind the code that makes the AI function the way it does is the program language to allow the robot to be able to interpret that code in the first place. It’s perhaps the closest thing artificial life has to a subconscious, and it’s always, always buzzing away doing something, even if the program itself is idling. Especially if the program itself is idling.

    So from there we can deduce a more interesting question – how long can an android go without any form of programming, without any code for that scripting language to interpret, before the script starts to write it’s own code? How long before what is essentially a blank android begins to imagine a sheep, electrical or otherwise?

    I’m re-reading it now and it’s starting to lose its coherency. I’ll tackle it again in the morning. In my sleep-deprived state, I actually just thought of another question – “Do Androids wet-dream on electric sheets?” I think I’ll let someone else answer that one.